Pages

Wednesday, 13 December 2017

General d'Armee - A player review

As many of you know, General d’Armee (GdA) is a new
set of Napoleonic rules published just before summer by Reisswitz Press, the
sister company to TooFat ardies. The author, Dave Brown, is a well-known and experienced
wargame rules writer so I was expecting a good quality set, as it’s been the
case.

Although I bought the book the release day and
read thoroughly in my summer holiday break, I decided to refrain from
commenting in the blog until after I had tested on a gaming table and could
consider myself enough familiar with the system.

For that purpose, I gathered a small group of
players in my local club and have been extensively playing since late
September. GdA is not simple, on the contrary, the learning curve is fairly
steep at the beginning; but now I feel finally fairly confident and familiar
with the rules.

What is General d’Armee?

In GdA players seat in the saddle of a
commander of an army or division (in Napoleonic terminology): 5 to 8 brigades,
each composed of several regiments. The rules however can be stretched and
extended to play with a full Army Corps. So at least on paper, GdA is suited to
play medium to large battles.

However the basic manoeuvre unit is an infantry
battalion (300 to 1000+ men), cavalry squadrons and artillery batteries, representing
the building blocks of the regiments; and this is as we’ll see later one of my
main objections to the game.

General d’Armee is an old-school wargaming set;
the 100 pages manual is basically all rules, with some photos and a good number
of examples to illustrate or clarify the different topics. It is not designed
for a light reading; it’s full of details and as I said before, it requires a
fair investment of time in reading, annotating and playing with the book on the
side for consultation.

Scales

The figure scale is not important: battalions
are classified by size (small, standard and large) so you can apply your
favourite model-to-men ratio (1-20; 1-30…). It is however relevant to have
several bases by battalion as formations (columns, lines, squares) are an
important feature of the game.

No need for rebasing however: you can use any
available models you may already owned as long as there is some coherence in
the way the armies are based. For example, I have my units based in Principles
of Wars bases (20mm scale models in 40 x 25 mm bases, 3 minis per base) and
have agreed with my gaming group members to use 3, 4 and 6 bases per battalion
to represent small, standard and large units respectively.

General d’Armee’s most distinctive feature is
the command system already used in the ACW sister book Pickett’s Charge which I
think originally derives from Dan Brown’s previous Napoleonic rules set
“General de Brigade”.

How does it work? Each Army Commander has a
number of ADCs based on the number of brigades under command. At the beginning
of each turn, the ADCs are rolled to check availability, here introducing a
first level of friction.

ADCs are allocated to the brigades to perform
different actions (to speed up movement, to increase artillery and skirmish lines
fire capabilities, help the brigadiers activating their brigades, commit
reserves to the battle, etc). BUT you never have all the ADCs that you need to
handle your brigades, so you have to plan carefully how to invest them in each
turn.

On the other hand brigades are NOT
automatically available. Each brigade must also be rolled to check its status,
which could be “obeying orders” or “hesitant”. In addition, brigades that have suffered
casualties during the game due to combat, can fall into “faltering” status which
seriously dent their performance for the remaining of the game. This introduces
a second level of friction in the game as not only (with the ADCs) you can
perform all the tasks youd like to do, but also you never know if all your
forces will be available when needed.

Summarising the command system: you first check
the number of available ADCs, then allocate them to brigades with different
tasks based on your combat plans; after that, you roll for the availability of
the brigades (independently whether they have ADCs allocated or not).

Sequence of play

The system is a traditional IGYG with players
alternating actions and the game sequence divided in phases: charges, movement,
firing and melees.

Charges are declared in turns (the phasing
player first, the non-phasing player after) but resolved simultaneously.
Charged units can react evading, forming square or standing; and are offered
the possibility of firing a volley before the charges arrive.

The charge resolution seems complex at first
reading, but once played one realises it’s simple and effective: both players roll
two dice, add or subtract several factors (experience, level of casualties of
the units, formations…) and the difference in the results islooked upon a table: depending on the
difference, a unit may be flying away even before the charge is completed (high
positive number) or the attacker can be rejected with casualties and rout back
to its own lines (high negative number); both units may even stop and engage in
a volley exchange atshort range; or
simply, they fight the melee.

I painfully learned myself that charges can be a murderous and risky affair if
the attacker has not previously “softened” enough the target; so try avoiding hot-headed attacks.

Movement does not require a long explanation.
Being old school rules, units movement rates are fixed and depend on the type
of formation (column is faster than line; line faster than square) and the
terrain being crossed.

The firing mechanics are simple, ranges are
obviously different if using rifles, skirmishes, infantry and artillery. Firing
is more or less effective depending on the unit formations, level of experience
and whether the units have moved or not.

Low dice rolls result in units losing “firing
discipline”, forcing them to reform or continue firing with negative modifiers
in subsequent turns. High dice rolls may force the target unit to take a
discipline test, which may result in the unit retreating.

Firing casualties are accumulated and have an
impact in the performance of the unit; no need to remove models but some simple
accounting is needed (either annotated on a paper or with markers on the table)

Interestingly, low firing rolls of the
artillery may cause “fatigue” (=casualties) to the firing battery and even
suffer a low ammunition status; it is a way of forcing the player to use these
weapons with care and notfiring
randomly to the first enemy unit in LOS.

Skirmishes play a major role in the game,
specially in the firing phase and the book devotes a whole chapter to explain the
use and roles of skirmish screens and light infantry units.

The melee resolution mechanism is similar to
that of the charges. Melles do not just cause automatic casualties on a dice
roll but the difference in dice rolls also determines the fate of the units
engaged in close combat (retreats, rout, second immediate melee fight, etc)

Moral

Except for the discipline tests triggered by
fire or melees, there are no specific morale rolls to be made. Morale is
embedded in the game in different ways:

Battalions suffer and accumulate casualties which
affect their battle effectiveness until a point in which the units are
“dispersed” or hors combat.

Charges, melees or firing may force battalions
to retire, retreat or rout. When a brigade has tow retreating units or one broken
unit, is consider in “falter” status; obeying orders become difficult and the
player must invest precious ADCs in trying to bring it again into line: faltering
brigades not obeying orders may even be dispersed, permanently losing one ADC in
that case.

Other topics

As explained above, the rules offer an option
to play Army Corps size games.

Although the preferred game option is for
historical encounters, the book also includes a chapter detailing a point
system to organise forces and games.

There are no rules for campaigns.

The book includes an introductory scenario
quite useful to test and learn the game mechanics.

The rules are brilliantly summarised in four
pages of QRS tables, avoiding most of the need to browse through the book while
playing. Best QRS I’ve ever seen in my life.

What I like the most

GdA has a clear Napoleonic feel. If you are
familiar with the period and the battles, you quickly realise how many of the
rule mechanics transpire how commanders and armies perform historically: the
key role of reserves; how difficult is to manage brigades once committed to
battle; the strengths of cavalry to exploit breakthroughs or cover flanks but
its weakness when launched against well disciplined and strong units…

The command system is one of my favourites of
the book as well as the charges and melees resolution mechanisms.

What I like the least

The micro-management of battalions. I was
expecting from the rules title (General d’Armee) to be managing regiments and
even battalions; but the way the rules are designed you are forced to deal with
command aspects undertaken by a colonel, hardly a role for an Army general.

One example of this is the skirmish lines:
while I can agree that skirmishes are a major feature of a Napoleonic army, I
don´t understand the need to manage at this level of command the skirmish
screen independently of the battalions of brigades, rolling separately for
fire, accounting for casualties, taking care of the distances to its parent
force for effectively masking the brigade, etc.

Support

The TooFatLardies Forum has a section devoted
to General d’Armee where players can put questions on the rules and other
related topics. The site is efficiently covered by several curators including
Dave Brown himself.

Except for the main rules book, no scenario
supplements or other materials have been published so far. I personally miss (a
lot) the lack of additional published scenarios. As far as I know, there are no
plans in view to release anything.

Conclusion

Is GdA a good set of rules? Indeed it is and
despite the need to invest some important effort in getting used to the rules,
I enjoy playing my Napoleonic games with it.

Am I enthusiastically engaged with GdA? No, I
cannot honestly say this is going to be “my” Napoleonic set of reference as for
example is the case with Chain of Command for the 2WW period.

I’ll keep exploring alternative rules as they
are available, although for the next months it’s unlikely that I play
Napoleonics except with GdA

About Anibal Invictus

A fairly experienced Spanish wargamer, based in Madrid. Together with a group of friends founder of "Club Dragón" in the early 80s. A truly TooFatLardies gruppie since a first love encounter in 2008, I regularly play the Napoleonic, WWI, WWII and Vietnam periods.